captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> brown: the spotlight was on ohio today. mitt romney made three stops there, and president obama headed that way tonight after casting his own vote in chicago. good evening. i'm jeffrey brown. >> woodruff: and i'm judy woodruff. on the newshour tonight: we update the barnstorming by both

candidates and talk to n.p.r.'s mara liasson about the big money the campaigns are investing in battleground state >> brown: then, speaking of big money, paat solman walks us through those trillions of dollars spent by the u.s. government each year.n >> reporter: what you might not know about the federal deficit. a guided tour in and around washington, d.c. with the "wall street journal's" david wesson. >> woodruff: we have another in our series of topics not being talked about in the campaign. tonight's missinissue is europe's debt crisis. >> brown: an ancient and historic city at risk in a modern-day civil war.is we look at the destruction in aleppo, syria. >> this is one of the great tragedies. aleppo's an extraordinary cross roads of cultures, religions, all built on aro strata of centuries of --t >> woodruff: and ray suarez has the story of a 19th century recording made on tinfoil by thomas edison, digitally converted so we can hear it.

>> brown: th's all ahead on tonight's newshour. 's major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> computing surrounds us. sometimes it's obvious and sometimes it's very surprising in where you find it. soon, computing intelligence in unexpected places will change our lives in truly profound ways. technology can provide customiexperiences tailored to individual consumer preferences, igniting a world of possibilities from the inside out. sponsori tomorrow arts today. and the william and flora hewlett foundation, working to solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world. and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... this program was made possible

by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station froviewers like you. thank you. s >> brown: with election day less than two weeks away, the race for president looks tighter than ever. a new "associated pre" poll today shows president obama and govern" romney in a statistical dead heat. r ithe meantime, one prominent voter, the presidenhimself,id cast his ballot in early voting in chicago. ( cheers and applause ) iaddition to showing the president and mitt romneyon running neck and neck nationally, the new poll reveals that among women, president obama has lost a 16-point lead he held just one month ago. thrace has tightened among men, too, in the oppite direction, with romney losing much of his adntage over the president. still, on november 6, it will b the swing states that most matter, and, today, romney

concentrated once again on ohio, where 18 electoral votes are up for grabs. he addressed a raucous crowd in cincinnati this morning. >> you know something's wrong about the direction we're headed ght now.g you know that we don't want to keep going on the same path we've been on for the last four years. you know we can't afford fourou more years like the last four years. i mean-- do you want real big change in this country? ( cheers and applause ) well, you're going to get... on november 6, you're going to make it happen. we're going to get erica on track again.ge >> brown: republicans were also. today trumpeting big gains in the money race, with over $111 million raised from october 1 to october 17. that gives the romney campaign, the republican national committee and state parties $169 million cash on hand.

democratics aren't required to provide its october totals until mid november. the president, fresh off an appearance on the "tonight show" wednesday, continued to criss- cross the country, with stops in florida, virginia, and, yes, ohio. >> you notice my... mvoice is getting a little hisrse. but... but i'm just rsing to keep on... just going to keep on keeping on. ( cheers and applause ) >> brown: on cbs this morning, he picked up an endorsement from former secretary of state colin powell, a republican who bucked his party to vote f the president in 2008. >> i think this is an exciting race between two very, very capable men. and i signed on for a long patrol with president obama, and i don't think this is the time to make such a sudden change. >> brown: with powell's nod, the president campaigned in tampa, florida, where he told supporters they have a stark choice. >> you can chose the top-down policies that got us into this mess, or you can choose the policies that are getting us out of this mess.ma ( cheers )

you can choose the foreign policy that's reckless and wrong, or you can choose one that's steady d strong. ( cheers ) you can choose to turn back the clock 50 years for women and for immigrants and for gays, or, in this election, you can stand u e for that basic principle that makes our country the envy of the world, that we're all created equal. >> brown: those comments come amid continued fallout over statements about abortion by indiana republican senate candidate richard mourdock in a debate tuesday night. >> and i think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that god intended to happen. >> brown: in a new ad out today, the obama campaign attempted to link romney to mourdock, anto comments made by vice presidential nominee paul ryan. >> so, i'm very proud of my pro- life record, and i've always adopted the idea, the position that the method of conception doesn't change the definition of life. >> brown: romney has distanced himself from murdock's remarks even while continuing to support him. romney has said he opposes abortion except in the case of incest, rape and a threat to the life of the mother.

>> deficits mas altos, desempleo cronico. >> brown: the romney campaign continued its air war, as well, reachi o to hispanic voters with a spanish-language ad that accused the president of failing to live up to his promises. >> you can't change washington from the inside. >> brown: this evening, the president stopped in his hometown of chicago and became the first sitting president to participate in early voting in fact, it appears now that as many as one-third of all american voters will cast their ballots before election day. meanwhile, the obama campaign announced today at formerda president clinton will join president obama in florida, ohio and virginiaanext week. and for more on the money being poured into the presidentialek contest, we turn to margaret warner. >> warner: if you live in a battleground state, chances are you've already seen the ads we just showed, probably more than once. ad spending by the pridential campaigns, the parties and the outside groups supporting themal continues toar exceed the pace in 2008.s

combined, they've reportedly spent upwds of $900 million on $9 ads, much of it in nine battleground states.t according to the ad tracking firm kantar mea c-mag, at least $44 million has gone to iowa, $45 million ineiovada, in virginia, and,r in oh, a whopping $116 million.pi the newshour is partnering with kantar media c-mag and n.p.r. to sort through these numbers, and we're joined by mara liasson of n.p.r. to look at what the ad spending figures tell us about the shape of the race. mara, so nice to have you. >> nice to be here. >> warner: so what do these ad spending numbers if you look at the breakdowns tell us about the strategy each camp is pursuing now this close to the election? >> what's interesting aboutn ths iverse is the battleground of nine states-- wisconsin is the

newest addition that came out around june-- these states are set in stone. this is a battleground that's not going to shrink because of a peculiar aspect of this i cycle. in the past because campaigns had to make tough decisions because they had limit ord finite resources, sometimes they would leave a state. that's not going to happen this year. this battleground is not going. to shrink. but what these ads tell us is, at this moment it'swh also not growing. if the battleground was growing you'd see republicans bye ads in michigan or pennsylvania and they're not right now. >> warner: but romney is still going to places like -- he hasn't been to pennsylvania lately. why that disconnect? why aren't they pulling out? >> because they don't have to. they have so much money they can afford to play wherever, even in states like nortat carolina whih most people think is benaond the rea of democrats. or nevada which some people think is soon to be beyond the reac dof republicans. there's no point. they have so much money they can play everywhere, at least for the reason of pinning the other

guys down. >> warner: now,e when you look t these numbers it looks as if the relative strength is almost equal if you combine the parties and the campaigns and the outside groups? >> yes, right now. previously through september on t obama campaign had a little edge according to the kantar numbers because for a variety of reasons. they can bye ads at a slightly discounted rate than, for instance, the republican super pacs. also because the obama campaign strategy of buying adds was to buy them early like you'd buy a plane ticket in advance, you'd get a cheaper rate. the romney campaign strategy is to buy them at the last minute so you have to pay more. so up until now, yes, very equal. but the kantar folks expect that that's going to change in t last two weeks because romney has a money advantage and thatn could switch to an advantage for him in the final weeks. >> warner: now, what does -- what do these numbers tell us about who is being targeted and

has at changed at all for each campaign? what sorts ofat viewers are they going after? >> well, they're clearly going after undecided voters. it's a very small universe. in these state there is's probably about 800,000i truly0 undecided persuadable voters. >> pelley: you mean total? >> total! total! that means campaigns are spending a thousand dollars per persuadable voter. now, to them that's probably a bargain. sounds like a lot of money. but for instance here's a target group. white male midwestern voters. that means that you're seeing ads on college football games in the midwest. and that is among -- >> pelley: college football. >> college football. that's among the most expensive advertising you can buy which on a live sporting event, especially football. >> warner: what about the undecidewomen voters we keepwo hearing about >> clearly targeted. unmarried women are a target for the obama campaign, married suburban women are a target for the romney campaign and they're

advertising on all of the programs, whether it's daytime where theytera, could possibly reachhose people. >> warner: this is probably a dumb question because any of us who've seen the ads know the answer, but explain the proportion of positive to negative ads. >> it's 7-1 negative and that's not a surprise to anybody. negative ads seem to be the ones that work ang that's what you're seeing this year. >>. >> warner: do you expect any kind of shift in this patern? these numbers are pretty fresh up to this wee so you'r looking at the final two weeks. >> well, i expect the shift that romney would have an advantage at the ad wars at the end. he's going to be paying morealer spot and merbe because he is so much more money in the end he can buy more spots. but the obama campaign has been pretty effective. they've targeted, they've bought early and they've been able to kind of keep pup spot for spot with the republican super pacs and the r.n.c. and the romney campaignho've had to generally hoend more money per spot.

>> warner: and you don't expect anybody to pull -- either any ofn to pull out of these states? >> i don't see why they have to. they both have plenty of money to stay until the end. what i would watch for is if that ad battleground expands. do the republicans see an opportunity where it's worth pouring money into michigan or pennsylvania. that's what i'd be watching for. that will tell us something. >> w aner: wellne, mara liasson, npr, thank you. >> woodruff: still to come on the newshour: the high-stakes politics of the budget; missing from the campaign-- europe's troubles; destruction in an ancient syrian city; and the world's oldest playable recording. but first, the other news of the day. here's hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: hurricane "sandy" beat a path across stern cuba and the bahamas today as a category-2 storm. it's being blamed for at least four deaths so far. "sandy" brought strong surf, heavy rain and winds topping 105 miles an hour, and it left behind a trail of downed power lines and uprooted trees. the edges of the storm will likely bring tropical storm

conditions to southeast florida, and, as it moves north, the mid- atlantic and northeast could also feel the effects through early next week. forecasters are also predicting "sandy" could collide with a blast of arctic air from the north, creating conditions for a super storm along the east coast. a new wave of ethnic violence has erupted across western myanmar, killing at least 56 people. dozens more were wounded in the clashes between buddhists and muslims. the violencee-ignited en sunday in rakhine state, triggering the worst fighting the country has seen since june. nearly 2,000 homes were also destroyed and thousands of residents fled the area. in afghanistan, two u.s. troops were killed in what appeared to be another insider attack. it happened on a late morning patrol in southern uruzgan province, when a man in an afghan police uniform turned his gun on e troops.tr it's the second suspected insider attack in two days. yesterday, two british service members died in a shooting with n afghan police officer. in u.s. economic news, new claims for unemployment fell last week, indicating slow but

stey jogrgrowth. stocks on wall street edged higher today on a handful of corporate earnings reports. the dow j.nes industrial average gained 26 points to close above 13,103. the nasdaq rose more than four pondts to close at 2,986. those are some of the day's major stories. now, ck to jeff.ck >> brown a major issue of the campaign and the country: the growing debt problem. today, there was a new call for a bipartisan effort to tackle it. it came from a group of more than 100 business leaders supporting a balanced approach of spending cuts and increased tax revenues. the group, called "the campaign to fix the debt," released a f letter saying it was noterushins any one plan but that any deal should make reforms to all areas of the budget, including social security and medicare. it's an oft-stated goal, but what makes it so hard to more forward on? our economics correspondent, paul solman, has been taking a look. 's part of his ongoing reporting, "making sense" of financial news.

>> reporter: you've heard the numbers before: federal budget, $3.6 trillion, deficit $1 trillion, debt $16 trilli. but where do all the trillions actually go? anything we can do about them? the "wall street journal's" david wesz has written a primer red ink-- to itemize and explain. a we asked him to take us on d.c. budget tour to give us the hard truths and hard answers, starting on capitol hill. okay, this may be hokey but we're in the house budget committee room. i'm sitting in the chairman seat and since i ask questions on behalf of the american public i ask you, the expert on the budget, what do we need to know about it? >> one of the reasons i did the onok was because of the times i've sat in this room and heard democrats and republicans argue about the budget and you would never know if you were an outsider listening wh were they talking about because it would be impossible for all the things they say to be true w i

just thought it would be useful eo put some facts on the table. >> report r: and so as if a witness to the budget hearing, wessle testified to hard truth number one. >> last year, 63% the government spent went out the door without: a vote of congress. spending that's on autopilot. it was paying for promises that have been made in the past. social security, medicare, medicaid, farm subsidies, veterans pensions and, of course interest on the federal debt. >> reporter: that's not to say we won't modify-- some might say renege on-- some of the promises. but who's willing to modify the main one. health care. >> reporter: in 1960 the federal government spent 9.5% of all its money on health care. this year it's 25%. the congressional budget officee says it will be 33% in a decade. on cannot control federal spending without finding some way to control health care cost

>> reporter: okay, two-thirds of the budget on auto pilot,th heah care costs going up inexrabbbly, anything else we need w? >> even if we fired every single federal employee from the person who's watering mhelle obama's tomatoes to theo woman who's sitting in se silo in north dakota with her finger on the button to launch a missile if need be, if we got rid of all of m we would h we saved a lot of money but it would have only made a small dent in the deficit the deficit was over a trillion dollars last year and we would have savede $435 million in was and benefits if we fired eve federal employee. >> reporter: including the military? >> including the military. the point is that most of the money the federal government collects does not go to pay bureaucrats it goes right back of again in the form benefits oror state and local government grants orr contracts. if we don't restrain spending someone is gng to get less

money from the federal government. >> reporter: so if not health care, how about something else? and i can guess why you wanted us to go here.is that's the pentagon and this must be militarypending whic is how much of the total budget? >> it's about 20% of the feder budget now. $700 billion last year. more than t combined defense budget of the next 17 largest defense budgets. more than china plus ru tia plus germany pus france plus spain plus israel plus the united arab emirates and a few more i can't remember. >> reporter: do wes really cant to skimp on defense with china an emging superpower making offensive moves in the south china sea and those islands in japan? >> we want to have enough defense to protect ourselves but the question is how much defense really need and how much can we afford to be the cops of the world? the thing that strikes me about we defense budget is how large the component decisions are so take this one question. how many aircraft carriers are

enough? the congress has told the navy they have to have 11 aircraft carriers. that's about ten more than any other country has. and the navy sayse we need to replace one aircraft carrier every five years for the rest of my life and then some. each aircrt cirrrier is $11 billion. it's as much money as we spent to replace 750,000 shoulder, knee, and hip joints for people on medicare. one aircraft carrier, 7 50,000 joint replacements. that's the magnitude of the decisions we have to make. >> reporter: 20% of the foeral budget spent on defense. about 25% on health care including medicare and medicaid, another 20% oro on social security. americans do see the deficit as a problem, we just can't agree on how to solve it. >> i would cut a fair bit of the entitlements, we need entitlement reform. >> i wouldn't cut defense. >> considering we have so much defense as it is, i'd utt a little more there, perhaps and

not quite as much as social welfare. >> i don't know exactly what to cut. if i did, i'd probably run for office. (laughter) >> reporter: on the other hand, if he did know and ran on drastic cuts he probably wouldn't win. h meanwhile, wessle escorts us to the treasury department to explain one last fact slice of the pie: yearly interest on the $16 trillion national debt. >> alexander hamilt was the first secretary of the treasuil and in many ways he's the father of the federal debt. after the revutionary war, he convinced all the individualry states instead of trying to pay their debts off individually-- problems proving a big for some of them-- he convinced them to combine them all so we had one federal debt and -- >> reporter: and this is the next big line item? >> interest on the federal debt last year amounted to about $230 billion. that's more than the combined budgets of commerce, education, homeland security, interior,

justice, andhe the federal courr combined. it's 6% of all federal spending that went to interest payments last year. >> reporter: and that's with interest rates near all-time lows. if those rates rise, so will the interest tab. but, of course, spending is only half the budget battle. >> you can't talk about the federal government without talking about revenues, without talking about taxes. and one thing that people in if middle-class don't believe-- but they should-- is that the tax te on them, thete federal tax burden, has been going down for the middle-class for the last 30 years. it was about 19% in 1979 before ronald reagan came to washington. in 2007 before the great recession it was 14%. the line goes down and it has gone downgo even further since because of the great recession and the tax credits we put in to t and address it.

>> going down for all of us, and for our special interests, too. wessle chose the monocle-- one of d.c.'s choicepots far power lunch-- to make the point, telegeneralally. >> this is ere lobbyists meet members of congress. it's not the floor of the house. c-span doesn't come in here but this is weere thth deals are really cut. >> reporter: what impact does that have on the budget? d >> the budget of the united states is huge. it's $3.6 trillion, right? and in there arall sorts of deals to favor one industry or one company or one segment of the society. last year the government took in $1.3 trillion in tax revenue but the treasury adds up the t value of all the loopholes, deductions and credits and they amounted to $1.1 trillion. sothey gave away almost as much money as they collected.ga >> reporter: largely says wessle because over a nice lunch lobbyists can convince lawmakers to change the tax code. >> someone says, you know, the

law isn't really clear on this facet or the tax court has ruled this and if we could just get a piece of legislation in that would clarify this it would be in my interests and, by the way, congressman, i was so happy to see you at your fund-raiser last night. >> reporter: well, it can't be that blatant! >> it's rarely that bald a transaction, but occasionally it is. but you are naturally more likely to have lunch here with meone who's raised money for your campaign than someone who turned down every invitation. >> reporter: so tax cutting for citizens and busines s, big spending mostly oin auto pilot result? fat deficits, fatter debt back at the pentagon we asked wes wessle what would he do? >> it's the role of the journalist to say you have to think about defense spending, you have to think about taxes and health care costs and these are the fundamental building blocks from which you can make choices. i'm afraid if i list out my choices, the people don't who don't like them wo't listen to

my facts andte i'm trying to avd that. >> reporter: we are trying to avoid that, too. >> brown: on paul's "making nse" page, there's more from his wasnsngton, d.c. budg d tour, including david wessel, explaining how the history of u.s. debt woes mirrors what's happening in europe today. >> woodruff: and that brings us to europe's debt crisis. that is one of the little- mentioned topics in this year's campaign and the subject of tonight's segment on "missing issues." throughout the campaign, president obama and mitt romney have debated extensively on the direction of the u.s. economy. >> 43 months with unemployment above 8%, 23 million americans struggling to find a good job right now. >> 31 consecutive months of job growth, 5.2 million new jobs created. >> woodruff: but there's been little discussion about a potential outside threat to the nation's recovery: europe's struggle with its debt crisis.'s yesterday, the 17 countries using the euro saw their overall

debt rise to 90% of their total economic output, e highest level since the euro's creation in 1999.t moreover, at least nine member countries have slid into recession. that's had an effect on american companies operating overseas. this week, automaker ford announced it's closing a major plant in belgium and two facilities in britain after losing more than $1.5 billion. president obama has worked behind the scenes and publicly to press r more aggressive action by his european counterparts, warning against deeper spending cuts. in may, he hosted world leaders at camp david for the g8 summit, with europe at the top of the agenda. a >> put simply, if a company is forced to cut back in paris or madrid, that might mean less business for manufacturers in pittsburgh or milwaukee. >> woodruff: on the campaign trail, however, both candidates

have chosen only to highlight the contrast when the subject comes up. in june, during a speech in ohio on the economy, president obama said america took a different path than europe. >> today, the economies of many european countries still aren't growing, and their unemployment rate averages arou 11%. but here in the united states, 1 americans showed their grit and showed their determination. we acted fast. our economy started growing again six months after i took office, and it has continued to grow for the last three years. ( cheers and applaus ) >> thank you! >> woodruff: mitt romney has laarged the u.s. could eventually face similar borrowing problems as me european countries because of the president's policies, something he's raised in all three presidential debates. >> spain spends 42% of their a total economy on government. we're now spending 42% of our economy on government. i don't want to go down the path to spain.

if the president were reelected, wed go to almost $20 trillion of national debt. this puts us on a road to greece. we can't expect entrepreneurs nd businesses large and small to take their life savings ornd their companies' money and invest in america if they think we're headed to the road to greece. and that's where we're going right now unless we finally get off this spending and borrowing binge. >> woodruff: while panic over the fate of the euro zone has calmed of late, big troue es remain.es in greece, austerity measures continue to drive political unrest and protests among residents and workers, while spain and other nations wrestle with chronic unemployment especially among young people. a closer look now at the economic risks from europe to our economy and why the presidential candidates are avoiding some of the blunt talk about it. this time, we turn to two writers who follow these issues closely. zanny minton beddoes is the economics editor for "t economr t" magazine; she formerly worked as an economist

at the international monetary fund. and james surowiecki writes "the financial page" for the "new yorker" magazine, a regular column on business and finance.n [please stand by] [technical difficulties]

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not it remains a source of profound uncertainty. that's also been one of the problems that europe has caused in the united states. it's just made people worried about what they should do in terms of the future and europe continues to play on people's minds. >> woodruff: so zanny beddoes, do you agree with that? >> i agree james, i think there were two ways in which what' going on in europe affects the u.s. one is, if the european economy is in a recession oeven if they're stagnant that has an effect on u.s. exports, there's an incredibly close investment relationship, it's a close an important trading relationship. if you have a europe that is stagnating for the next five, ten years, that is a big drag on the u.s. economy. but i think the more dramatic impact would be if there was some kind of financial catastrophe n europe, someop breakup of the euro and it was the fear of that that on and off over the past couple of years has hung over wall street, has preyed on -- increased uncertainty and has been there

like a kind of b shadow over the world economy. i think what's happened in the past couple of months is that that has receded and the big question is has it receded temporarily or permanently. and that's the whole narrative of this european crisis has been that usually the european central bank does something that lms nerves and a few months later there's another big blowup and people get worried again. i think thi time is different in the sense that there have been a profound shift within ce iain parts of europe, certainly germany. so i think within the next year or so until the german election next year the odds are we'll maintain some form of calm. but i think the real problem is no one knows where europe is going to end up in five years and i'm sure it's going to be a tough road to get there. but if you don't know where you're going there's a huge amount of uncertainty. >> woodruff: so jim surowiecki, the president was defending his approach to this and governor romney was taking shots at the

president saying the u.s. is headed down the same direction as europe, why do you think we're not seeing a fuller, more robust discussion about this on the campaign trail? >> i think there are a couple reasons. the most obvious reasons vn that simply that frankly there's not much the that the president can do about what europe is going to do. so certainly the obamain administration has tried to exert various forms of moral situation, tim geithner has been pushing policymakers in europe to deal with the crisis but in reality that's about all they can do so that, i think, is probably the biggest reason the second reason is the complexity ofthe euro crisis plros itself out in a variety of ways so you can spin the story in many different ways and i don't think it lends itself to a clear narrative. mitt romney wants to reduce it to to p much governmen spendings in spain or greece. the spain case is very odd.

spain got into trouble not because of too much government spending but because of a real estate bubble that burst. and obama's case, he wants to say, well, they went to austerity route and we didn't and things turned out well but it doesn't exactlyend itself to a clear political i message d i think that's probably another part of it. >> woodruff: dan isny beddoes, you started to -- zanny beddoes, do you think those are the reasons we're not hearing more from the candidates about this? >> i think they're absolutely the reasons. it's complicated, it's not easy to -- for governor romney to kind of tar the president with having messed up somehow and i think actually the biggerr picture that that's no bad thing that it's not that high on the agenda here because the truth is there's not much the u.s. can do. this is a european problem the europeans have to figure out where tery can go and i see in some sense too muchre coming frm the u.s. in any obviousuc way is countproductive.

because rightly or wrongly in europe who is the u.s. to tell the european what is to do when there's such a huge debt and deficit problem here. >> woodruff: just quickly, finely to both of you, i know other bipr players in the international economy china, latin america, jim surowiecki, why aren't we hearingore about those places? >> well, you know, china we are obviously hearing a lot about but mainly in the formf china bashing and the reason for that are kind of clear. it that china is the -- a clear villain at least they sort of play that role. i think the really interesting question about china is china's economy has slowed significacly. it's growing faster than most of the reslyof the world but it's slowed significantly and that does have a profound impact on the u.s. as well in terms of the future of exports and things like that. but it's easier to talk about currency manipulation or just talk about tariffs and tires

than it is to talk about the ways in which the two economies are profoundly interconnected. so that has to do partly the question of trying to keep the candidates being simple rather than complex. >> woodruff: zanny beddoes, in a couple sentences, how do you see that as an issue or not on the campaigntrail?tr >> i agree with james. i think the problem is that china is being vilified, it's easy for destic purposes to lify china. i think that's a dangerous thing to do. it's dangerous because at the samelime right now there is a leadership transition of a different sort going on in china and i think that to ten usually there's a lot of uncertainty about how that plays out. in terms of the economy overall, slower growth in the the emerging sworld here to stay and that is going to have an impact on the economy here which we're hoping to turn into an economy that focusesiore on exports. >> woodru: zanny minton beddoes, james surowiecki, we thananyou both. and we'll examine other "missing

issues" in the coming days. >> brown: in syria, the army announced that a four-day cease fire will begin tomorrow, to coincide with the muslim holiday of eed el adha. but the government reserved the right to respond to rebel attacks. one opposition group, the free syrian army, gave a qualified backing to the truce but also demanded that the government free captured fighters. meanwhile, there were new clashes today in aleppo, whe activists said 14 people died. and it is to aleppo that we now turn for a closer look at one less-reported aspect of the ongoing violence. as the conflict in syria rages on, the death toll climbs. more than 34,000 people have been killed in the violen that began in march of last year.l more than 350,000 refugees have left the country. a million more have been displaced from their homes in syria.

it's a human tragedy on an immense and horrifying scale, but it's also becoming clear that the battle between syrian government forces and the rebel free syrian army is taking another kind of toll-- on the country's rich and historic cultural heritage. a center of that heritage: aleppo, syria's largescity, now a scene of destruction that we report nearly every night. but less known is this: aleppo is considered perhaps the oldest continuously inhabited human settlement in the world, home to numerous civilizations layered on top of one another-- including hittites, assyrians, arabs, mongols and ottomans-- that reach back to the beginning of recorded time. >> we have references to a place called aleppo from roundabout 2000 b.c., and it's clear that it had certain antiquity then. >> brown: julian raby is the

director of the freer gallery of art andackler gallery in wa, ington aand an expert in middle eastern art.gt you have shiites, you have sunnis. but, at the same time, you had a plethora of different christian communities, armenians, syrians, greeks, an extraordinary crossroad of cultures religions, and all built on what felt like a strata of not centuries, but millennia. >> brown: many of the city's architectural and cultural landmarks have long been designated as "world heritage sites" by unesco. until recently, the old city had been a vibrant place, with locals and tourists flocking aleppo's famous souk, an eight- mile-long marketplace where goods from throughout the region were bought and sold for centuries, signifying the city's role as a major trading crossroads between east a west. another renowned site, the

citadel, was a large, fortified medieval palace. the great mosque dates to the th century. last week, it was damaged after rebel fighters attempted to take it from government troops who'th been holed up inside for several months. and recently, fire raged throerh the souk.h newshour sent freelance video journalist toby muse to take a look at the situation in the old city. he found no commerce, no tourists, only war. the souk's alleys now a bomb- out ghost town. merchants and shoppers replaced by rebel fighters battling government snipers.- shops with wares replaced by sandbagged fighting positions. just moments before muse arrived, syrian forces had shelled and destroyed a building, injuring two people. >> allah akbar! >> brown: around the corner, there were battle calls and more fightg. nt helicopters arrived and sniper fire intensified.

muse had to flee the area aftert being grazed by a ricocheted bullet.r a particularly sad aspect to the destruction is that aleppo has historically been home not only ers of civilization and religions, but an interaction between them. c julian raby showed us an example in one of his museum's most prized possessions, a large cauldron. >> it an extraordinary object, it's one of the most elaborate of all of these silver-inlayed vessels from the 13th century.t butt's extraordinary becauseb it combines imagery that's typical of muslim princes:olo. >> brown: yeah, i see them on horseback playing. >> right, right. and then, little vignettes takel from the life of jesus. >> brown: this is literally the- - the cultures intertwined. >> intertwned. >> brown: in the meantime, as the battles continue, outside experts fear the destruction of this cultural history will only grow.ed

>> it is truly a loss for world heritage. >> brown: kishore rao is the head of unesco's world heritage nter. >> i don't think, i mean, we're in a position to attribute blame to any one party, but surely it is the state party to the world heritage convention which is supposed to be responsible for taking care of its heritage. and, in this case, syria has clearly sort of ignored all international treaties that it has signed. >> brown: unesco has complained to president assad and the syrian government, calling for protection of the heritage sites of aleppo, but rao is not optimistic. >> the situation continues to be going from bad to worse, and i might inform you that we have a mission which is on standby. we have experts who are ready to go to the country and to be able to make an assessment of the damage that has been caused.

but certainly that can happen only when the security and safety situation improves. >> brown: no one knows when that time will come, and julian raby says there may still be further problems for the city's treasures if and when the fighting finally stops. >> one of the great worries now is that, as aleppo moves from a battleground, does it become a ground for looting? will all of this material be smuggled out and dispersed? so, a real concern, and not just for the monuments, not just for the fabc and the vitality of the city, but also for some of its most imc rtant artworks. >> brown: people we talked to acknowledged that what's happening in aleppo and much of syria today is first andar foremost a human tragedy, and expressed a desire to end the kiing and suffering of the country's people. at the same time, a warning that goes beyond the daily headlinesa

>> thiss one of the great tragedies. aleppo is a-- it's not just ath museum of architecture; it-- it really captures a sense of the middle east at its very, very best. its ability to have different communities living quite easily side by side in a very, very natur way.at >> brown: in other words, it's not just buildings being destroyed, but a vital rt ofta world culture and history that's at risk, another casualty of syria's bloody civil war. online, you can watch a slideshow of images from aleppo's uk, from a bustling marketplace in 2010 to shuttered and deserted shops today.uk

>> woodruff: finally tonight, the amazing story of how modern digital technology opened up a window into the beginnings of recorded sound. ray suarez has our look. >> suarez: the sound is just 78 seconds long. it features a cornet solo and a man reciting nursery rhymes, including "mary had a little lamb." experts say they have reproduced the sound of the oldest playable recording of an american voice and the first captured musical performance. it's a recording made in 1878 on a small sheet of tinfoil, then placed on the cylinder of a phonograph invented by thomas edison. hand crank turned a stylus that moved on the foil, recording sound. the foil was donated years a to a museum in schenectady, new york, but its significance wars not appreciated until this summer, when it was brought to researchers in berkeley. the foil was so fragile it could not be touched. instead, it was scanned by computer to read the grooves in the foil and create a program to

recreate the original sound. 134 years later, it's a little indistinct, a little hard to make out. here's a little bit of what they heard of the cornet: ♪ for more on the significance of this work and how it was done, we turn to one of the primary exrts involved.lv carl haber is with the lawrence berkely national laboratory. he's in new york state, where the recording will be played for the public for the first time tonight in more than 100 years at the museum of innovation and science. and carl haber, where's the foil been in the ensuing hundred years since it was last played? >> well, inthe recent years, ith think, since about the 1970s it's been in the collection of the museum. before that i believe it was in the hands of some private collectors who i think passed it

on to the family and then it was finally given to the museum someme in the 1970s. >> when you firstsoot in the your hands and started to figure out how to hear what was on it, did you already have an idea of what had been recorded? a cornett? a human voice? of thing? was it really sleuthing that started from square one? >> well, we had no information directly about what was on this particular recording but we have done a number of projects on earlrecordings from the 1800s.re and there are certain things that typically show up, like people will do "mary had a little lamb" because that was kind of iconic at the time and other such t things. it could have been anything so we didn't really know what it was going to be. >> suarez: the machine that was meant to play this foil back is now long ne. tell us how you reverse-engineered this so oncen

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[please stand by] [technical difficulties] lease stand by] [technical difficulties] [please stand by] [technil difficulties] the obstructionl f justice object that we're photographing as well. and we trained that camera over the surface of this foil and we took large numbers of images that together for probably 4,000f megapixels or somethingf that scale, very, very large image, but it was large enough of that it contained in minute detail the undulations, the movements of the groove that edison's machine had cut into this foil. once we had the image, we were able to put it on a computer and as you say reverse engineer, ask the question mathematically what would the need have done to create this shape or what would the need have done to respond to this shape if it had been drown through it. and from there it'soctually a very simple set of physics to get you to what the sound would have been that theyc recorded or

would have been heard in the process of playing it back. t's actually a very direct process. once you can properly characterize the surface. >> suarez: now that you've done that, do you feel confident that what we've played back during the show this evening, what you're going to hear tight, is pretty much what people would have heardn 1878. >> i think what people weald have heard in 1878 would have been a lldtle clearer because if you've seen the picture of thetl foil it was folded seven times and then stored in an envelope for 140 years or whatever. so those folds and perhaps it had been unfolded a number of times because it was very ragged and had fissures that ran along through the folds and so that unfortunately gives a very characteristic sort of thump, thump, thump sound that you hear when you play it, every time you cross one of those folds you hear a noise.

when it was first played back in st. louis in 1878 i presume that wouldn't have been there. >> suarez: do we know who the people are? the person playing the cornett? the people saying the nursery rhymes? we don't know know who was playing the cornett, but chris hunter who's a curator in schenectady has done a lot of research and he looked through the microfilms and he found st. louis newspapers from that time announcing the exhibition of this device and it was attributed to a man named thomas mason who was actually a journalist and he used the pen name i.x. pect, so i expect. he was apparently a humor writer. and it was recorded he purchased this machine and made an exposition of it in june of 1878. so our closest guess is that he is probably the person speaking. >> suarez: you know, all kinds of mhines, devices have been

made to capture and reproduce sounds, pictures, and yet we can't listen to our view many of thosehi images today. do we have to be careful that we preserve every old scrap of sound we've got? create a sound library, if you will, so that a century from now people will be able to listen to for instance, this conversation? >> i think that's very important to create stable archives of the information that we create as a culture. either you can debate as the amount of information gets larger and larger how best to do that buthe that's a question of, you know what do we do to preserve what's being created today and in the future and also what do we do to preserve that which was created in the past. for me i can understand a little bit better about the past because that's mostly what i've been thinking about and i think it's tremendously important preserve the images, the moving pictures and the recorded sounds of he past.

early sound is something they're not making any more of and it'r gives us a really significant and important window of history as a culture, inventors, i innovators, scientists, researchers about what people were doing, the insightshey had which really a lot of it underlies the information and communication age that we live in today.he so i strongly support the preservation of recorded information. suarez: well, in 2136 when people watch thisez they'll conclude beards were much more popular than they actually war. carl haber, thanks for your time. >> thank you vy much.ou >> brown: again, the major developments of the day. president obama made a marathon campaign trek across five states and cast his ballot early in chicago. republican mitt romney focused

battlegroundon t state of ohio. b and hurricane "sandy" beat a path across eastern cuba and the bahamas while the southeast coast of florida was forecast to feel some of the effects of the edge of the storm. online, we have a follow-up to last night's story about cost- cutting effor at a seattle hospital. hari sreenivasan has more. >> sreenivasan: health correspondent betty ann bowser continues her reporting with the story about one doctor's "ah-ha" moment, that his hospital could eliminate its waiting room and become more efficient. that's on our "health page." and another thing to thank your grandma for: human longevity. that's our "science thursday" story. all that and more is on our web site, newshour.pbs.org. jeff? >> brown: and that's the newshour for tonight. i'm jeffrey brown. >> woodruff: and i'm judy woruff. we'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening with mark shields and david brooks, among others. thank yoo and gd night.nd major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by:

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